This Dolphin Is Bubblegum Pink!

CALCASIEU CHANNEL, La.—A coastal area of Southern Louisiana is home to an extraordinary sea creature. The Calcasieu River Channel connects Calcasieu Lake to the Gulf of Mexico, and in this channel swims a rare young dolphin that’s bright pink head to tail!

Captain Eric Rue runs a charter fishing boat business in the area and says the dolphin is quite a sight. “It’s pretty much bubblegum pink,” Rue shares. “Once you see it, you kind of shake your head and go, ‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing!’”

Rue first came across “Pinky” almost two years ago. “I was returning from the Gulf of Mexico from a fishing trip. I first saw a POD of dolphins that was going below the surface. As I passed by, I noticed that something didn’t look just right—one of them was kind of light colored under the water. So I shut down the boat and waited. When the dolphins resurfaced, I realized one of them was, oh my goodness, pink!” he recalls.

Just about four feet long, the bright pink Atlantic bottlenose dolphin always kept close to its mom. Rue realized that it was probably a newborn! He got out his camera and took the dolphin’s first baby pictures.

Rue’s photos show the dolphin has dark pink or reddish eyes, indicating it’s an albino dolphin!

Since that unforgettable first encounter, Rue is thrilled to see Pinky develop and continue to hang out within the area. “I’ve seen it probably 50 times in the course of my charter fishing deals,” Rue says. “It’s considerably bigger now and travels with the whole pod.”

Rue notes that Pinky now swims “a good distance away” from its mom, playing and doing things on its own. Just last week, Rue got to see Pinky feeding on shrimp and small fish in the clear waters of the channel.

While landing a great big fish is always exciting, having the opportunity to see something this rare is simply amazing, Rue points out. “I’m hoping this one will stick around. It’s eyes are pretty shut, but they use something like sonar to feed. It’s growing and there’s all the food it can want here,” he adds.

Crowded Skies Lead to Close Calls

The skies were busy last month. Asteroids and space debris made headlines in March, and made the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) go on alert three times in three weeks!

The month started with an asteroid passing between the Earth and the moon. The 99-foot-long rock, named asteroid 2009 DD45, flew by about 50,000 miles from Earth on March 2. It was first spotted by Catalina Sky Survey’s Australian site in February.

CSS is funded by NASA to track asteroids and comets that pass close to Earth. The other two CSS survey sites, north of Tucson, are operated by the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. CSS in Arizona spotted another asteroid that passed about 57,000 miles above Earth on March 18.

Most asteroids in our solar system—about 99 percent—are in an asteroid belt ORBITING the sun between Mars and Jupiter, explains Andrea Boattini at CSS. These never come close to Earth.

“What we are looking for is a very small fraction of asteroids,” Boattini says, those that do get close. They  have an elliptical orbit around the sun, making them easy to tell apart from debris, which has a round orbit around the Earth and travels much faster, he explains.

Traveling at about 5 miles per second, a 5-inch piece of space debris caused ISS crew members to prepare for the worst March 12. They ducked into the Soyuz escape capsule for 11 minutes. The debris, a motor part from a U.S. rocket, passed within 3 miles of the space station. The ISS can change orbit to avoid possible collisions, but in this instance there was not enough time.

Crew members were put on alert again March 16. A piece of debris from a former Soviet satellite was headed their way. This time the debris passed at a safe distance, so they did not have to move the ISS or themselves. On March 22, they did have to change the station’s orbit to avoid debris from a Chinese satellite launch. The ISS was docked with the Discovery Space Shuttle at the time.

There are 17,000–18,000 pieces of debris the size of a baseball or larger orbiting Earth. Most of this space junk is higher than the space station, which orbits 220 miles above Earth.

Is Shaq Sinking Suns?

There's a new big man in town; the Phoenix Suns are betting he's the spark they need to win the playoffs.

One of the biggest stars in the NBA universe, Shaquille O'Neal, is now wearing purple and orange. And both Shaq and the Suns have a lot to prove. Shaq, who just turned 36 and has endured knee and hip injuries, wants to show he's still a big force in the NBA. His critics say that the Diesel is too old and too slow for a high-octane, blazingly fast team like the Suns.

During the regular season, the Suns are one of the toughest teams in the West. And while fans love the Suns' exciting and high-scoring brand of basketball, led by two-time League MVP point guard Steve Nash, the team has never won the NBA Finals.

The Suns believe that Shaq is the piece that's been missing. At 7 feet 1 inch tall and 325 pounds, Shaq gives the Suns a true center who grabs rebounds, plays tough defense and passes the ball well. Up till now, Amare Stoudamire has been stuck playing center for the Suns, even though he's really one of the best power forwards in the game. With Shaq in at center, Stoudamire is freed up to do what he does best!

"Psychologically it really helps us out. Guys are much more willing to go to the boards and fight around the basket with Shaq in there," explains Head Coach Mike D'Antoni.

Fans love Shaq's superstar qualities. The big guy has won four NBA Finals and was MVP for three of them! But the Suns have lost their winning ways since Shaq started playing on Feb. 20. In the trade for Shaq, the Suns gave up All-Star forward Shawn Marion, who said he wanted to be traded at the beginning of the season. For years, Marion had been a clutch scorer. As of press time, the Suns have won just two of their last six games and have fallen to fifth place in the Western Conference. Fans wonder whether it's growing pains with the big guy or could it be a bad fit?

'Doomsday Vault' Opens for Business!

SVALBARD ARCHIPELAGO, Norway-Imagine a bank that's so far north that polar bears outnumber the people living there! The bank is located on Norway's Svalbard archipelago just 620 miles from the North Pole. As you may have guessed, it's cold there. During winter's around-the-clock darkness, temperatures can fall to -22° Fahrenheit.

The bank was blasted into the side of an arctic mountain and has reinforced concrete walls to help protect its valuable deposits from natural disasters, global warming and even a nuclear explosion. Welcome to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault-also called the "Doomsday Vault" by the press!

You can find seedbanks all over the world. Native Seeds/SEARCH is a seedbank here in Arizona. Its mission is to protect the diversity of local seed used in farming and their wild relatives. "We have nearly 2,000 varieties in our seedbank, mainly corn, beans and squash," explains Carolyn Owens, who works on grants for the seedbank. "Just like the seedbank in Norway, the seeds need to be kept cold, so they're stored in a freezer," she says. Seeds for the bank come from southwestern states and northern Mexico.

Seedbanks help protect our food supply from the "what ifs" in life-like what if there's drought; what if a disease attacks a certain kind of wheat, or what if global warming changes what can grow around here?

Modern farming has led to fewer and fewer varieties of crops. This has brought about many varieties of food crops being lost forever, and Owens says it's alarming. "It's just more cost effective to grow a single variety...but you don't know what disease is going to come along down the road," she says. A disease could wipe out an entire variety of a crop, leading to food shortages. But if there are enough other seed varieties, like wheat for instance, one of those types of wheat may turn out to be resistant to the disease.

Owens points out that a lot of seedbanks are in politically unstable areas like Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and have been looted or destroyed. In the Phillipines, a flood wiped out the country's seedbank.

That's why the Svalbard Global Seedbank was created-to protect the diversity of seeds no matter what happens in the world. Countries can "deposit" different varieties of seeds. If a disaster jeopardizes crops, the country can make a "withdrawal" of seeds.

The vault was built by Norway at a cost of about $3 million. Because seeds are so small, the "Doomsday Vault" can hold up to 2 billion seeds!